The Better Liar(62)

    The house I was looking for was on Flor Del Rey. It was absolutely ordinary, a single-story adobe with a big picture window in the front, a couple of evergreens shading the right side of the house. In the short tiled driveway, I could see Dave’s car. There was an old OBAMA BIDEN 2012 sticker on the bumper, and the Steve Nash bobblehead Cadence had given him wobbled in the rear windshield.

I didn’t know why I still checked. I knew he would be here. I’d known for a long time. Before, I used to call him. I wanted to hear him lie to me. Now I just drove by. It was enough to see his car in her driveway.

In a way it was almost a relief, knowing what I was about to do.

Eli was asleep in the back with the ring of keys in his mouth. His breathing grew labored, and I reached around to pull the keys out. “You ready to go home?” I whispered.





40


    Robin


I make her sound so cruel, but Leslie wasn’t only cruel. I really loved her, you know; that’s the thing people get wrong about love. They think the closer you are to someone, the more they narrow; that love shears you down to the slimmest core, as if people contained seeds you could fish out and keep, saying, That’s the real you; all the rest is just flesh.

But it’s the other way around. The more you know someone, the more someones you know. They kaleidoscope outward before your eyes. If you feel you’re finally getting a handle on someone’s true self, you haven’t got a clue. Once you’ve met forty versions of them, then you can comfort yourself you’re getting closer.

I’ve seen a hundred Leslies, at least.

Here’s another Leslie:

Winter, late nineties. Eleven years old, with long sloppy bangs like Meg Ryan. She comes scrambling over the wall behind the abandoned gas station. “Tommy said you were back here,” she pants. “What are you—”

Her eyes flick between me and Placky, who’s lying on the ground.

“Did he bite you?” she asks at last.

I shake my head.

    “But he tried to bite you.”

I nod.

“Okay,” she tells me. “Okay. You didn’t mean to do it. Did Tommy see you? Is that why he was freaking out?”

“Yes,” I say. I hadn’t known he was there until he started yelping, and then he was running too fast for me to catch him.

“That’s not good,” Leslie says, almost to herself. “Did anybody else see?”

“No.”

“At least there’s that.” She stares at Placky. “I’m going to get a garbage bag.”

She disappears back over the wall. I sit down on the ground, dragging the pipe through the patches of dirt and snow to write my initials. It’s heavy and my arms ache.

Only one of Placky’s eyes is still intact. A blood vessel burst in it, so there’s a pink blob settled in the bottom of his eye, nearly obscuring the iris.

Finally Leslie returns from the other side of the gas station, pushing her bike and carrying a black plastic garbage bag. She turns the bag inside-out and puts it over her hand, just the way you do when you’re cleaning up shit, except she’s cleaning up the dog itself. It takes her a minute of struggling to get all of Placky inside the garbage bag, but then she’s pulling the ties tight and loading him into the metal basket on her handlebars.

“Give me the pipe,” she says.

I hand it over. She uses it to scrape through the bloody dirt and snow on the ground, until it’s just a messy pile of weeds and mud.

“Where are you taking him?” I ask.

“West. Candelaria goes almost to the river.” She stands up and peers at her handiwork, clapping her mittens together. “It’ll look like a coyote got him.”

“Why can’t we just put it in the trash?”

“Because someone might recognize him and tell the Schwartzes.” Leslie squints at me. “It’s a crime.”

“It is?”

“You didn’t know. But you can’t do it again.”

    “I know.” I knew even when I was doing it.

“Okay.” She sighs. “You’re lucky it was just Tommy. But he’s going to tell people. You’re going to say that he’s lying.”

“I will.”

“Good.” She carries the pipe over to the broken back window of the gas station and drops it in. I hear the clatter as it hits the tile. “I have to leave now if I’m going to get back before dark. It’s your turn to make dinner.”

“Thank you,” I mumble.

She wipes her nose. “Wash your hands. Before you make dinner.”

I nod.

Leslie gets on her bike, wobbling a little from the weight of the bag, and turns onto the sidewalk. I watch her puffy silhouette disappear past the rows of storefronts with electric luminarias lining their roofs.

Like the person, the event is never static. You could say this one is about love, about Leslie rescuing me, and that would be true.

You could say she shouldn’t have rescued me at all. That it’s about the blood in the snow. And that would be true too.





41


    Leslie


I stood over the sink. The dishes were soaking. I put my hands in, turning the skin pink, and then I went to the refrigerator and poured out the last of the wine with wet fingers. When I came back into the living room, Eli looked up at me. “Euh,” he said, and reached for my glass. I sat back on the couch and closed my eyes. Mary hadn’t answered my last three texts.